Live animal export is depraved and brutal. Its end can’t come quickly enough

The fact that no-one will ever be charged for the horrific cruelty inflicted on sheep on Emanuel Exports’ Awassi Express in 2017 is an apt end to a saga in which the most depraved treatment of animals was considered business as usual by regulators, bureaucrats, courts and prosecutors — and shows why Labor’s promise to end live sheep export can’t be implemented fast enough.

The department notionally in charge of overseeing the live sheep export trade, the federal Agriculture Department, knew for years about the disgusting conditions imposed on animals by Emanuel Exports and did nothing — with the connivance of its National Party ministers. Indeed, the Coalition government actually celebrated Emanuel Exports as a success.

Even after the conditions on the Awassi Express were revealed by 60 Minutes, the department allowed the company to continue to send sheep abroad on its hell ships before finally being forced by public outrage to suspend its licence. Eventually, the department acknowledged that Emanuel had been submitting false data to it and cancelled its licence.

But Emanuel Exports’ charmed run didn’t stop there. In an unbelievable and appalling decision, Peter Britten-Jones and senior member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Michelle Evans-Bonner overturned the cancellation in 2021, declaring that a change of management and some tweaks to its systems meant it should get its licence back.

Now the Western Australian Agriculture Department has decided there was nothing untoward about events on board the Awassi Express and has withdrawn its prosecution of Emanuel Exports days before the matter was due in court, Nine newspapers’ Latika Bourke — who has done great work covering this sick industry for years now — reported.

So killing thousands of sheep with heat stress, including boiling them to death in their own filth, and lying to what passes for the regulatory authorities has in the end had no consequences for anyone other than a brief cancellation of the perpetrator’s licence.

The bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and regulators who enabled and rubberstamped this depravity have demonstrated that there will never be any accountability or proper regulation of this industry. There simply isn’t any will.

To its credit, Labor went to the last election promising to end the export by sea of live sheep. But it is taking its sweet time to do it. Animals — more than 700 in the six months to June — are still being boiled alive on exporters’ ships while the government dithers, conducts inquiries and consults. It has only recently received the secret report of the panel appointed to consult on the phase-out.

“The phase-out will not take place during this current term of the Australian Parliament,” the government has rushed to assure the industry.

The consultation process for the phase-out has been swarmed with submissions from agriculture lobby groups opposing it. The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) is running a campaign it calls Keep Farmers Farming, proudly issuing a media release today boasting of “advertising targeting marginal seats sharing farmers’ fears about a phase-out of live sheep exports … Voters in battleground seats like Swan, Tangney and Hasluck understood what a ban would mean for jobs and small farming communities in WA.”

The NFF would be acutely aware that the federal government is desperate to retain the WA seats it won last year. Labor has already caved into demands to keep the petroleum resource rent tax a token impost on gas companies operating off Western Australia because of fears it would upset WA voters. With the bulk of the live sheep export industry based in the west, don’t discount another backdown driven by the imperatives of the next election.

If Labor is dithering, though, the Coalition is simply absurd. Yesterday David Littleproud — who as agriculture minister blamed his own department for the Awassi Express disaster rather than his predecessor, Barnaby Joyce — tried to blame a fall in sheep prices on the phase-out, despite it not happening until at least the middle of the decade.

The fall in sheep prices is actually due to oversupply, and it’s bizarre that, after his colleagues fired questions at the government over inflation and the cost of living, Littleproud was complaining about falling prices — the price of lamb has fallen 10% in the past year, which is great news for meat-eating households, but apparently a disaster to be blamed on Labor in the eyes of the Coalition.

The live sheep export industry is good for only one thing — providing a clear moral standard. Any support for it is depraved and sickening. It has been allowed to inflict monstrous cruelty on animals for far too long. Any foot-dragging in its abolition is unconscionable.

Should Labor just bite the bullet and abolish live animal exports for good? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.